BMW and motor sports: These two things have a long-standing tradition and simply belong together. Be it in motorcycle, touring car, sports car, rally or Formula One and Formula Two racing, BMW has amassed successes around the globe.
Promoting talent has always been a priority for us. In 1991, Formula sports saw the beginning of a joint talent promotion campaign by BMW and ADAC. Formula One drivers like Sebastian Vettel, Nico Rosberg, Timo Glock, Adrian Sutil, Ralf Schumacher and Christian Klien learned the basics of Formula racing from this program.
BMW is clearly the most successful brand in the 24-hour race around the Nürburgring’s north circuit.
In 1980, BMW announced the company’s entry into Formula One racing as an engine supplier. The partnership lasted until 1986.
Then BMW joined WilliamsF1 on the starting grid in the 2000 season. Gerhard Berger was the BMW Motorsport director at the time. Mario Theissen was nominated to assist him soon thereafter. We have scored 10 wins with the BMW WilliamsF1 Team.
In the middle of 2005, BMW acquired the Swiss team Sauber and took to the starting grid under its own steam.
Spearheaded by BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen, in 2008, the new BMW Sauber F1 Team established itself as one of the top three teams.
These are just a few chapters of BMW’s motor sports history. This goes to show that our decision to end our Formula One campaign was anything but easy.
Formula One racing had always been the perfect platform for BMW to showcase important brand values. We did this for years and transferred Formula One technology to series production more resolutely than any other manufacturer. The most recent findings obtained from Formula One racing to be applied to series production will be our KERS expertise.
However, our planned cost reduction will cause component standardization and homologation to increase, and thus will set certain limits on our engineers’ creativity. This doesn’t necessary correspond to our belief of what’s ideal. In times of economic and societal change, we must remain capable of taking action and being flexible. We have now paid tribute to this fact.
Our ten years of Formula One experience have had a deep impact on our development engineers. We have racing to thank for numerous technological innovations which can be found in our mass-produced vehicles today.
The main reason for this decision was not our current performance in Formula One racing or the general economic situation. It was solely the company’s strategic realignment.
Of course, our decision to discontinue our Formula One campaign will have an effect on our employees. Since we only made this decision yesterday, I trust that you will understand that I cannot give you any more precise information on this matter yet.
We will develop and assess various scenarios and do our best to find solutions for our employees in Hinwil and those involved in the Formula One project in Munich and Landshut. Most importantly, we are aware of the responsibility we shoulder and will inform staff as soon as we can make a clear statement.
We will continue our touring car and Formula BMW racing campaigns in 2010. This will be supplemented by our participation in ALMS and endurance races as well as our increasing activity in close-to-production customer sports.
As before, these activities will be supervised by Mario Theissen.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my personal thanks to our motor sports director Mario Theissen for his commitment and successes as well.
Furthermore, we will naturally continue our international motorcycle racing program, focusing on the super bike world championship series.
I would like to underscore what Mr. Reithofer just said:
Sustainability is becoming increasingly important. As a responsible premium manufacturer, we want to address this issue even more extensively than before.
What this means for our products is that:
They will be developed and built in line with the principle of sustainability across all development stages. Technological innovations will be accelerated even more, in order to constantly make our vehicles more efficient.
You will see a product of sustainable development at the IAA in Frankfurt in a few weeks in the form of a concept car. The BMW EfficientDynamics Vision will demonstrate how efficient a sports car can be. It will also prove that sustainability does not apply to the drive train alone, but to design and materials as well.
Anyone who takes a closer look at this concept car will understand the direction in which we are developing our technology. And it will become evident that we will have to dedicate more human and financial resources to this type of development work.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
BMW has always been active in the field of motor sports, and this will not change. We will maintain our outstanding tradition in touring car and Formula BMW racing over the long term. We will promote framework conditions that establish motor sports as the arrowhead of innovations that trickle down to future mass-produced cars. New drive concepts are just one example. BMW will continue to showcase sheer driving pleasure on the racetrack.